Des Teufels Lug und Trug: Nikolaus Magni von Jauer: Ein Reformtheologe des 15. Jahrhunderts gegen Aberglaube und Götzendienst by Krzysztof Bracha (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Des Teufels Lug und Trug: Nikolaus Magni von Jauer: Ein Reformtheologe des 15. Jahrhunderts gegen Aberglaube und Götzendienst by Krzysztof Bracha Michael D. Bailey KEY WORDS Krzysztof Bracha, Nikolaus Magni, Reformation Theology, superstition, late medieval belief, Nikolaus Magni von Jauer, De superstitionibus Krzysztof Bracha. Des Teufels Lug und Trug: Nikolaus Magni von Jauer: Ein Reformtheologe des 15. Jahrhunderts gegen Aberglaube und Götzendienst. Trans. Peter Chmiel. Quellen und Forschungen zur Europäischen Ethnologie 25 . Dettelbach: J. H. Röll, 2013. Pp. 272. Late medieval superstition has received a fair amount of attention recently. In 2010, Euan Cameron’s expansive Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250–1750 considered it at some length before moving on to later periods, and in 2013 my own Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies: The Boundaries of Superstition in Late Medieval Europe dealt with it exclusively. Krzysztof Bracha’s detailed study of a single late medieval author and a major (arguably the major) late medieval treatise on superstition is both the latest and also earliest important study in this area. The book is a German translation and updating of Bracha’s 1999 Polish publication Teolog, diabel i zabobony:Świadectwo traktatu Mikolaja Magni z Jawora De superstitionibus (1405 r.). In the intervening years, he has produced a number of valuable articles on superstition, several in German and a few in English, but it is wonderful to have his major study finally made available in a language that far more Western European and American scholars will be able to read. Nikolaus Magni was born in Jawor (German: Jauer) in what is now Polish Silesia around 1355. He studied and then taught at the University of Prague for over two decades, until he moved to the University of Heidelberg in 1402. He was an important theologian and academic leader at both institutions, and his movements to some extent illustrate the lines of intellectual connection and influence that criss-crossed Central Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, stretching from Prague, Krakow, and Vienna in the east to Cologne and Heidelberg in the west. The first part of Bracha’s book consists of two substantial chapters that trace Nikolaus’s life and career and situate him and his work in the context of late medieval efforts to promote religious reform among both the clergy and laity. Also in Part I is a shorter, more technical chapter detailing the origins and manuscript circulation of his great work De superstitionibus. The second part of the book examines that treatise in detail, with five chapters grouped around major aspects of superstition that it addressed. [End Page 224] As Bracha readily admits, the importance of this treatise does not lie in any great originality on its part. On almost every point, Nikolaus relied on standard patristic and scholastic authorities like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and William of Auvergne. What distinguishes his work is its encyclopedic nature and its astonishing circulation. More than a century ago (in the only other book-length study of Nikolaus), Adolph Franz identified 58 surviving manuscript copies of De superstitionibus, an enormous number for a theological treatise (Magister Nikolaus Magni de Jawor [1898]). Bracha has expanded this list by almost 100 additional manuscripts, bringing the total count to 152, listed in an appendix. Almost all of these manuscripts originated in Central Europe, meaning that Nikolaus’s influence was somewhat confined geographically, but it was all the more intense for that concentration. Also remarkable is that his influence basically did not extend past the fifteenth century, nor did his treatise ever find its way into print. I will return to this point below. Bracha’s book performs two important tasks that should give it a resonance beyond what its seemingly narrow focus might promise. First, in Part I, it provides a short but valuable study of Central European intellectual and religious currents through the lens of a major but now little-remembered and understudied figure. Then, in Part II, it presents a detailed exploration of late medieval superstition via the most extensive and widely circulated Central European exemplar of an antisuperstition treatise. Precisely because Nikolaus Magni was not startlingly original on any point, Bracha’s study gives background information...